Abstract
During the Enlightenment a wide variety of views about both the value and disvalue of politeness were defended. At one end of the spectrum were authors such as Shaftesbury and Addison, who uniformly praised politeness for its positive contributions to communication and cultural progress. At the other end were theorists such as Rousseau and Montesquieu, both of whom were deeply critical of politeness. In this essay I focus on Kant’s views about politeness, examining and evaluating his arguments both for and against it. Although Kant’s position on politeness lies somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of Enlightenment views about progress, ultimately he sees more value than disvalue in it. There is something in politeness that “inspires love.”
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Quotations from Kant’s works are cited in the body of the text by volume and page number in Kant 1900–. When available, I use—with occasional modifications—the English translations in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (Kant 1992–2016). Otherwise, translations are my own. Abbreviations used: Anth = Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, MS, Metaphysik der Sitten, RGV = Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, V-Anth/Mensch = Menschenkunde, V-Anth/Mron = Mrongovius, V-Mo/Collins = Moralphilosophie Collins, WA = Beantwort der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?
- 2.
I would like to thank Patrick Frierson and Steven Crowell for their advice and suggestions on this chapter.
References
Addison, J., & Steele, R. (1964). Selections from the Tatler and the Spectator. In J. A. Robert (Ed.). Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Aristotle. (1894). Ethica Nicomachea [Nicomachean Ethics]. In I. Bywater (Ed.). Clarendon Press.
Baxley, A. (2010). Kant’s theory of virtue: The value of autocracy. Cambridge University Press.
Cohen, A. (2008). Kant on dinner parties: The ultimate Kantian experience. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 39, 113–135.
Ercolini, G. (2016). Kant’s philosophy of communication. Duquesne University Press.
Foucault, M. (2008). Introduction to Kant’s anthropology. In R. Nigro, (Ed.). Semiotext(e).
Frierson, P. (2005). The moral importance of politeness in Kant’s anthropology. Kantian Review, 9, 105–127.
Habermas, J. (1989). The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society (T. Burger, & F. Lawrence, Trans.). The MIT Press.
Habermas, J. (1991). Erläuterungen zur Diskursethik [Remarks on discourse ethics]. Suhrkamp Verlag.
Hume, D. (1975). Enquiries concerning human understanding and concerning the principles of morals. In L. A. Selby-Bigge, & P. H. Nidditch (Ed.). (3rd ed.). Clarendon Press.
Hume, D. (1985). Essays moral, political, and literary. In E. F. Miller (Ed.). Liberty Fund.
Kant, I. (1900). Kants gesammelte Schriften [Kant's collected writings]. Walter de Gruyter.
Kant, I. (1992–2016). The Cambridge edition of the works of Immanuel Kant. In P. Guyer, & A. W. Wood (Ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Kant, I. (2000). Königsberger Kantiana. In S. L. Kowalewski & W. Stark (Ed.). Felix Meiner Verlag.
Klein, L. E. (1994). Shaftesbury and the culture of politeness: Moral discourse and cultural politics in early eighteenth-century England. Cambridge University Press.
Klein, L. E. (2003). Politeness. In A. Kors (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the enlightenment, vol. 3 (pp. 309–314). Oxford University Press.
Louden, R. (2007). The world we want: How and why the ideals of the enlightenment still elude us. Oxford University Press.
Louden, R. (2011). Kant’s human being: Essays on his theory of human nature. Oxford University Press.
Louden, R. (2012a). Review of Kant’s theory of virtue, by A. Baxley. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 50(1), 142–143.
Louden, R. (2012b). Are moral considerations underlying? In S. Schleidgen (Ed.), Should we always act morally? Essays on overridingness (pp. 117–137). Tectum Verlag.
Louden, R. (2013). El Kant De Foucault [Foucault's Kant]. Estudos Kantianos, 1, 163–180.
Louden, R. (2016). Argue but obey? Questioning Kant’s enlightenment. In R. Jiménez, R. Hanna, R. Louden, J. Rosales, & N. Madrid (Eds.), Kant’s shorter writings: Critical paths outside the critiques (pp. 284–300). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Louden, R. (2018). Review of Kant’s philosophy of communication by G. Ercolini. Kantian Review, 23, 155–158.
Melton, J. V. H. (2001). The rise of the public in enlightenment Europe. Cambridge University Press.
Montesquieu, C. B. (1949). The spirit of the laws (T. Nugent, Trans.). Hafner Publishing Company.
Rousseau, J.-J. (1964). The first and second discourses. In R. D. Masters (Ed.). St Martin’s Press.
Shaftesbury, L. (1999). Characteristics of men, manners, opinions, times. In L. E. Klein, (Ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Smith, J. M. (2005). Nobility reimagined: The patriotic nation in eighteenth-century France. Cornell University Press.
Tolonen, M. (2008). Politeness, Paris, and the treatise. Hume Studies, 34, 21–42.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Louden, R.B. (2021). ‘An Illusion of Affability that Inspires Love’: Kant on the Value and Disvalue of Politeness. In: Xie, C. (eds) The Philosophy of (Im)politeness. Advances in (Im)politeness Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81592-9_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81592-9_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-81591-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-81592-9
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)